While at E3 this year, I was able to try out Sony’s Singstar for the PS2. At first I was a little hesitant to pick up the surprisingly well-made microphone, and just stood by watching other people sing. But when nobody was playing anymore, I decided to give it a try. While I played, one of the representatives from Sony that was demonstrating the game played with me the whole time. SingStar has been a very popular game in Europe, so its surprising that it took so long for the game to come over – it was instantly apparent to me why it’s so popular as soon as I started playing.

The most impressive thing about the game is the user interface. It’s very clean and very intuitive, and I actually like shuffling through album covers while looking for songs to sing. There is a very generous mix of rock and pop music, and it was interesting to see Nirvana, The Darkness, and Franz Ferdinand (to name a few) in the song list. Just as Guitar Hero helps you better appreciate what a guitarist can do, SingStar will make you appreciate how well someone can sing or perform certain lyrics. The “do do do” and “lucky lucky” interludes Franz Ferdinand’s “Do You Want To” come to mind as being very tricky to get the words right. The high notes in “I Believe In a Thing Called Love” by the Darkness also come to mind as being incredibly challenging.

The game shows you the music video while you sing. This gives players something to watch during solos and other non-singing parts, so you’re not completely bored. When you are supposed to sing, the lyrics show up at the bottom of the screen with the word you’re singing highlighted. Depending on how close you are to getting the correct note/pitch, you get points. Playing alone probably won’t be as fun as it would be playing with someone else, just because it’s fun being able to compete and see who sings better. Lines show up on the screen corresponding to how the actual song is sung. As you sing into the microphone, another line will appear, graphically depicting if you are higher or lower than the note you should be at. The closer you are to the song’s own line, the more points you get. If you hit notes correctly at certain points of a song’s line that are sparkling, you’ll get a “Golden Note” which counts for bonus points. It’s a very simple game – one that can teach you how to sing your favorite songs.

I had fun playing SingStar on PS2. A version is coming to the PS3 that will allow players to download songs, but the multiple PS2 versions will be pre-chosen packages. Even though the PS3 version was on the floor, I wasn’t able to try that one out because there were a lot more people packed into the PS3 section cracking jokes about “600 dollars” than I would have cared to show off my singing abilities to.